Knowing a Van Gogh painting when you see it is one thing, but understanding it is quite another.
In order to truly see and appreciate a van Gogh piece such as “The Starry Night,” you have to be able to look at it with a fresh eye (not an easy task for something you’ve probably seen seen 100 times before). Can you forget about the famous artist behind it and the stories you’ve heard about his life? Can you forget that you’re looking at a work of art that’s valued at well over $10 million? Can you forget that you’re viewing one of the most famous paintings in the world?
Take all that away, and “The Starry Night” is a simple, small oil painting, 29 in. by 36 in. It portrays a landscape consisting of a village tucked in among some hills, a night sky with stars and an exaggerated crescent moon, and a tall tree. There is no activity, no people, and no animals. Described like this, you would hardly think the picture was worth a second look. So what makes it so special?
In a nutshell, the most extraordinary feature of “The Starry Night” is not what was painted, but how it was painted. Van Gogh has divided the picture so that all the activity and interest is focused in the upper two-thirds of the piece. There, in the night sky, the paint is so thick that it sits like a crust on the canvas, manipulated into strange and unnatural shapes. If you let your imagination go, you can begin to imagine all sorts of possibilities and explanations in those swirls. This is a painting meant to conjure images and emotions in the viewer, not the artist’s definite representative of them.
THE MASTER BEHIND THE MASTERPIECE
Vincent Willem van Gogh (1853-1890) was originally from Holland, but spent much of his young adult life traveling around Europe, jumping from one unsuccessful career path to the next. It was not until he was 27 years old that he decided to become a painter. He studied art at various academies for nearly a decade and although he was incredibly prolific, he only sold one painting during his lifetime.
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One of your spring chores is to get all that winter coat off your dog’s face and body so he can stay cool in the summer and not shed so much hair everywhere. The bonus is that you can finally see what he looks like underneath! The Dodo collected before-and-after pictures of 15 dogs that were transformed by one spring grooming session. It’s good to see your puppy again after that long cold winter. -via Metafilter
(Image credit: indignant_cat)
Eight-year-old Alissa Sizemore has taken dance lessons since she was four. In May of 2014, a truck ran over her right foot, and it was amputated below the knee. She was back in the dance studio even before she received her prosthetic leg. Less than a year after the accident, Alissa performed a solo at her dance school’s recital. The song is "Try" by Colbie Caillat, which Alissa says is an inspiration to her. Watch as she starts off dancing with her new leg, and then removes it for more freedom. The audience was impressed -and so am I! -via Buzzfeed
羊毛フェルト製「リアル猫ヘッド」。 上野・東京都美術館・平泉展選抜展 佐藤法雪【猫科】生徒作品展 日程：平成２７年４月１８日（土）～２３日（木）※月曜休み 会場：東京都美術館（上野）１階 第１展示室 pic.twitter.com/ZCer3Nth66
— 法雪needle felted cats (@freecatdoll) April 6, 2015You will be forgiven for thinking that someone Photoshopped a cat’s head onto a human’s body. The head is a little big, but that’s because it had to fit over the human head. It’s a handmade cat head.
This creepily realistic cat head was made from sheep’s wool felt by teacher Housetu Sato and his students of the Japan School of Wool Art (nihonyoumoua-togakuen). It’s the only school in the world to boast a specialist cat-making course where students learn the art of creating realistic-looking “needle felted cats”.
Sato-sensei is an expert in this niche field and has even published a series of books on how to make realistic felt animals. He instructs students from complete beginners onwards in this special art, and below you can see them modelling their impressive but disconcerting creation.
「リアル猫ヘッド」【猫科】の生徒さんがノリノリで猫被ってくれました＾＾みんな楽しそう！上野・東京都美術館・平泉展選抜展・佐藤法雪【猫科】生徒作品展４月１８日（土）～２３日（木）※月曜休み：東京都美術館１階第１展示室 pic.twitter.com/vrHf7nXnL3
— 法雪needle felted cats (@freecatdoll) April 7, 2015You want to try it on? You can, if you attend an art exhibit at the Tokyo Museum of Art, where this cat head will be on display starting this weekend. See more pictures at the Cat Doll Blog. -via Uproxx
Have you filed your income tax return yet? April 15th is the deadline, you know. It might be the most awful day of the year for tax procrastinators, but not for everyone. It’s a red letter day for Ben and Beth, in this romantic comedy trailer from Nacho Punch. -via Boing Boing
Who says working at a museum is boring? Watch the curators and staff from the Seal Cove Auto Museum dance and show off what they do!
The website When You Work At a Museum... is hosting a dance video competition for museums. They did this once before, and this time around there is plenty of participation from institutions like the Cambridge Museum of Technology, the National Atomic Testing Museum, and the Molly Brown House Museum. There are 28 entries.
The submitted videos are listed in links so that you can watch them all. Voting begins on April 20th, and each voting period will last 24 hours. Read more about the competition at Smithsonian. Continue reading to see a selection of the video entries.
There are times when it is inappropriate to sigh when you confront your future, but eventually there comes a time... Occasionally I think about how Lunarbaboon comics could be a great jumping-off point for philosophical discussions, but then it becomes clear that there isn’t a whole lot to add to his simple yet incisive vignettes. Especially when they include the supernatural. Or Star Wars.
Cemeteries are supposed to be peaceful and even sacred places, but there are made out of real estate and business. The business generates income by selling burial plots -which is not the same as selling real estate in most places. Eventually, all the plots will be sold. Cultures have developed different ways of dealing with this problem, from emptying graves to stacking more coffins on top. But what if the business of the cemetery goes bankrupt?
If the process of a foreclosure or a bankruptcy starts, the rest of the operations at the cemetery screech to a halt. So the maintenance of the grounds, the burial of individuals who prepaid for their plots, and other day-to-day goings on stop while the courts and banks work out what will happen next to the business and land.
Families and friends of those who prepaid for their burial end up faced with a difficult decision. They can wait for the bankruptcy or foreclosure issue to be resolved, find and purchase a new burial plot elsewhere, or, if the courts allow it, hire someone with the machinery to dig the grave in the plot they already paid for. Care of loved ones’ graves also falls to them during that time.
From here, what happens next varies widely on a case by case basis.
Laws and customs for dealing with bankrupt or abandoned cemeteries vary from country to country, and from state to state. The procedure for those already buried there can be quite complicated, depending on many factors. Today I Found Out goes over the problems of sustaining cemeteries through unexpected circumstances.
All these guys rock the beards and ‘staches well, as we see facial hair styles changing over the past 200 or so years. What impressed me was how one famous personality (at a time) can set the style. Whether the men who adopted a style from a particular politician, movie star, or war hero were emulating their idols or just thought the look was cool is whole other question. -via Viral Viral Videos
Can you sift data from a small clue your opponent let slip? Singapore TV host Kenneth Kong posted a puzzle at Facebook. Apparently, he and his wife have been arguing over it. Now, countless workplaces are losing man-hours while people try to figure it out on their own, or are else trying to explain it to each other. Kong says it’s a Sec 3 question, passed to him by a P5 student. Can someone familiar with the Singapore education system explain what that means?
I don’t think there’s any math involved, technically, but there are numbers, so if you give up and just want to know, the answer is here. The explanation is pretty easy to understand, and it makes me glad I didn’t tackle it. After all this, I doubt Cheryl will be receiving any birthday gifts. -via Uproxx
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.
Here are five odd and unexpected top ten hit songs, in no particular order of oddness.
1. “The Woody Woodpecker Song"
In 1948, the Kay Kyser Band recorded the only #1 hit song about a cartoon character. The song is about a fair, semi-mediocre, only occasionally funny cartoon wacky bird. Basically, Woody was a poor man's Bugs Bunny.
Sung by Gloria Wood and interrupted by Woody's famous laugh done by Harry Babbitt, the song was a smash hit, selling 250,000 copies. It also has a place in recording history as the only song from an animated short subject to be nominated for an Academy Award for “Best Song".
(Bonus trivia: the original voice of Woody W. was the great Mel Blanc.)
3. “Rock-a-bye Your Baby (with a Dixie Melody)"
Jerry Lewis was and is a brilliant, talented, versatile comedic genius. But did you know Jer had a top ten hit record? In 1956, just a few days after his split with partner Dean Martin, Jerry took over for an incapacitated Judy Garland at a gig in Las Vegas, singing many of Judy's most popular songs. This included Judy's “Rock-a-bye Your Baby (with a Dixie Melody).”
The song went over so well, Jerry incorporated it into his own act and recorded the song as a single. The song went certified gold and actually hit #10 on the charts. (One wonders how his ex-partner Dean Martin felt when he saw Jerry had a gold record. (????)
3. “The Ballad of the Green Berets"
Led Zeppelin is promoting the release of the remastered, 40th anniversary edition of the album Physical Graffiti with an interactive video. In the video, you can go inside through the windows of 96 and 98 St. Mark's Place in New York City, which were photographed for the album cover. The scenes inside are fictional, and range from modern day partying to concert footage to surreal dream sequences. You can go from room to room, all to the tune of “Brandy & Coke (Trampled Under Foot),” which is a remastered alternative version of “Trampled Under Foot.”
Try it out for yourself. When I tried it, the music was somewhat glitchy, which might be due to many people using it at once. I found letting it load for a longer time helped. -via Buzzfeed
Despite efforts, mtn lion P-22 still thought to be hiding in crawl space under Los Feliz home http://t.co/c57ZXpAff0 pic.twitter.com/EifpeBbbZp
— KTLA (@KTLA) April 14, 2015Two workers went underneath a home in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles yesterday. One fled as fast as he could after he came face-to-face with a mountain lion! He alerted Jason Archinaco, the homeowner, who called authorities.
Armando Navarrete, a team leader with Los Angeles Animal Services who was the first wildlife official on the scene in Los Feliz, said the mountain lion was about 25 feet behind a wall separating the crawl space from a balcony under the house.
The worker who discovered the animal looked as white as a ghost, Navarrete said, and had gotten out of there “like a bat out of hell.”Navarrete said he at first figured the beast for a bobcat. But when he crawled in himself and got about 10 feet away, he knew he was staring at a top-of-the-food-chain animal.
The cougar was identified as the locally famous P-22, a tagged cat who makes his home in nearby Griffith Park. He became internet famous when his image was captured by National Geographic photographer Steve Winter in 2013 with the Hollywood sign in the background.
To get the cat out of the crawl space, authorities tried making noise and shooting bean bags at him, but the cat wouldn’t budge. He made no aggressive movements. With a crowd of people around and helicopters overhead, wildlife authorities blocked the entrance to the crawl space and decided to wait until the neighborhood was calm before trying again to get P-22 out. After all, he may have been underneath the house a long time before being spotted. As of this morning, he was still underneath the home. -via Buzzfeed
A rowing crew from Washington University in St. Louis was practicing in Creve Coeur Lake when they rowed through a school of Asian carp. The invasive species didn’t like the disturbance from the nearby motorboat, and jumped into the air to show their feelings. One of the seats was lost in the attack, but I believe the students are okay. There’s no mention of whether any fish were left in the boat- I hear they are pretty good eatin’. -via Arbroath
A study a few years back told us that money doesn’t buy happiness, except for people earning under $75,000 a year. The conclusion of the research was that money only contributes to emotional well-being up to the point of not having to stress about money. Above that point, more makes no difference. Dan Price is the owner of Gravity Payments, a credit-card processing firm. He took that study to heart in a concrete way. Yesterday, he announced to his staff of 120 people that he will be giving raises over the next three years to bring them all up to $70,000 a year.
If it’s a publicity stunt, it’s a costly one. Mr. Price, who started the Seattle-based credit-card payment processing firm in 2004 at the age of 19, said he would pay for the wage increases by cutting his own salary from nearly $1 million to $70,000 and using 75 to 80 percent of the company’s anticipated $2.2 million in profit this year.
The paychecks of about 70 employees will grow, with 30 ultimately doubling their salaries, according to Ryan Pirkle, a company spokesman. The average salary at Gravity is $48,000 year.
Price hopes to raise his own salary again when the business becomes more profitable. But he still benefits from company profits, and presumably doesn’t have to make monthly car payments. And with employees who should be near the peak of emotional well-being, at least financially, Gravity Payments will most likely continue to do well. Read the entire story at the New York Times. -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Matthew Ryan Williams for The New York Times)